Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on the Sinful Woman

This edition of Mar Jacob of Sarug's (d. 521) homily on the sinful woman who anoints Jesus at the banquet – widely identified in the west as Mary Magdalene – focuses on the theme of weeping which Jacob describes as the dominant characteristic of repentence. For him, the sinful woman is the example of true Christian contrition. The volume constitutes a fascicle of The Metrical Homilies of Mar Jacob of Sarug, which, when complete, will contain the original Syriac text of Jacob's surviving sermons, fully vocalized, alongside an annotated English translation.

Recognized as a saint by both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christians alike, Jacob of Sarug (d. 521) produced many narrative poems that have rarely been translated into English. Of his reported 760 metrical homilies, only about half survive. Part of a series of fascicles containing the bilingual Syriac-English editions of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homilies, this volume contains his homily on the Sinful Woman. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume is one of the fascicles of Gorgias Press’s The Metrical Homilies of Mar Jacob of Sarug, which, when complete, will contain all of Jacob’s surviving sermons.

Recognized as a saint by both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christians alike, Jacob of Sarug (d. 521) produced many narrative poems that have rarely been translated into English. Of his reported 760 metrical homilies, only about half survive. Part of a series of fascicles containing the bilingual Syriac-English editions of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homilies, this volume contains his homily on the Sinful Woman. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume is one of the fascicles of Gorgias Press’s The Metrical Homilies of Mar Jacob of Sarug, which, when complete, will contain all of Jacob’s surviving sermons.

Scott Fitzgerald Johnson is Dumbarton Oaks Teaching Fellow in Byzantine Greek at Georgetown University. He is the author of The Life and Miracles of Thekla: A Literary Study (Center for Hellenic Studies & Harvard University Press, 2006) as well as of numerous articles, including ones forthcoming in Dumbarton Oaks Papers 64 (2010) and the Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (of which he is also editor). He has been a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows (2004–07), a Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks (2009–10), and a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress (2010–11).

Jacob of Sarug's pastoral concern and rhetorical acumen have earned him the title “the lyre of the Holy Spirit”. This volume presents both a text and translation of Jacob’s exposition of a passage central to Christian liturgy and piety.

Jacob of Sarug's pastoral concern and rhetorical acumen have appropriately earned him the title “the lyre of the Holy Spirit”. This volume presents Jacob's admonitions to those living a life of consecrated singleness to God.

In this third part of Homily 71, On the Fashioning of Creation, Jacob treats the God's separation of the waters from the earth, and the bringing forth of vegetation on the newly-revealed dry land.

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